Signadot Local

Product Introduction

1. Signadot Local is a Kubernetes-native development tool that enables engineers to run individual microservices locally while seamlessly connecting to live dependencies in a remote Kubernetes cluster. It dynamically routes production or staging traffic to local development instances through secure tunnels, eliminating the need for mocked environments or full-stack deployments.
2. The core value lies in accelerating backend development cycles by providing real-time feedback through direct integration with live cluster resources. It reduces dependency on CI/CD pipelines for validation and enables immediate testing against actual APIs, databases, and downstream services.

Main Features

1. Live Traffic Routing enables automatic redirection of specific Kubernetes service traffic to local ports using YAML-configured sandboxes, maintaining full compatibility with gRPC, HTTP/2, and other cloud-native protocols. Developers can debug using real payloads while preserving cluster security through end-to-end TLS encryption.
2. Surgical API Overrides allow granular control of dependency responses through a local dashboard, enabling simulation of latency spikes, error codes (5xx), or custom response payloads without modifying cluster configurations. This supports resilience testing for circuit breakers and retry logic validation.
3. Integrated Traffic Inspection provides a developer console for analyzing request/response patterns across services, including protocol-specific metadata and payload decoding for JSON/protobuf formats. Teams can replay specific API sequences locally to reproduce intermittent failures observed in staging environments.

Problems Solved

1. Eliminates 20-40 minute CI waits for environment provisioning by enabling direct local-to-cluster development, reducing feedback loops from code change to integration testing from hours to seconds. This addresses the "works on my machine" problem through deterministic environment replication.
2. Targets backend engineers working on microservices architectures who require real dependency integration for testing payment gateways, database migrations, or third-party API integrations without staging environment bottlenecks.
3. Critical for validating schema changes in distributed systems, where local mocks fail to capture real data patterns, and for frontend teams requiring instant access to backend feature branches during collaborative development sprints.

Unique Advantages

1. Unlike Telepresence or mirrord that require complex traffic splitting configurations, Signadot Local uses Kubernetes-native Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) to create ephemeral sandboxes with precise traffic routing rules without altering production deployments.
2. Introduces Chrome Extension integration that lets frontend developers selectively route browser traffic to specific local backend instances, enabling full-stack validation without Kubernetes expertise or CLI usage.
3. Provides competitive edge through AI-assisted regression detection in Smart Tests, which automatically baseline API contracts and flag behavioral deviations during local development sessions using machine learning models trained on historical traffic patterns.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. How does Signadot Local handle cluster authentication and security? All connections use mutual TLS (mTLS) with short-lived certificates rotated every 5 minutes, while traffic routing adheres to RBAC policies defined in the cluster. Local services never expose public endpoints.
2. Can I use this with Istio service mesh or other CNI plugins? Yes, it integrates with service meshes through HTTP headers and labels, preserving existing mTLS configurations and network policies while adding local routing rules as layer-7 overrides.
3. What happens to ongoing user sessions when I restart my local service? The routing layer buffers requests during restarts using persistent WebSocket connections and automatically reconnects to updated local ports without dropping in-flight transactions.